The time is now! But let’s talk about it later

"This is the first time we’ve addressed this issue since I’ve been on the City Council and that’s been three and a half years. So it is urgent that we do this now.”

With those remarks, San Diego City Council President Myrtle Cole opened what would be a nearly five-hour council meeting on Monday to discuss “Item 600,” or “Programs, Policies and Efforts to Address Homelessness.”

Let that number sink in for a moment: Three and a half years. Even with every major news outlet in the city beating the drum on what has become a truly dire situation and CityBeat’s own long history of covering homelessness, this is the first time in years that the City Council has thought to directly address the issue.

Better late than never? Not really. Even after the terrifying murders of three homeless men in 2016, it was only recently that the city’s leaders shifted their focus. What was so distracting that they didn’t notice that San Diego now has the fourth largest homeless population (sixth when it comes to youth homelessness) in the U.S.? County Supervisor Ron Roberts, who now chairs the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, said it best.

“A year ago, the mayor and I were working on something quite different,” Roberts said, addressing the Council. “This is far more important than anything we were doing last year in conjunction with the football team. Far more important.”

Supervisor Roberts received a round of applause from the crowd inside Golden Hall for that statement. And while we certainly give Roberts credit for his repentant tone, we can’t say the same about other local politicians and bureaucrats. Here are a few of the winners and losers from Monday’s meeting:

Winners:

Councilmember Chris Ward: Everyone from Roberts to fellow councilmember Mark Kersey commended Ward for his leadership on the issue. Ward doesn’t even have a year on the job, but came to the meeting with a comprehensive memo that included plans for surveys of city land, land trusts, adaptive reuse properties and tiny homes. Like many others who spoke, he also called for an immediate stop to “criminalizing” the homeless population and for the creation of “care zones” in the city. We highly encourage readers to check out the plan here.

Ismahan Abdullahi: The Director of Civic Engagement and Community Partnerships for the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans spoke forecefully and authoritatively about the connections between affordable housing and homelessness. Abdullahi came prepared with actual statistics on affordable housing, as well as a cleverly prepared chart in the shape of a goblet. “Trickle-down housing economics does not work,” she stressed and deservedly received the loudest applause of the day.

Losers:

Scott Sherman: Councilmembers Mark Kersey and Lorie Zapf seemed utterly oblivious to the severity of the problem, asking questions and making statements that were the verbal equivalent of the “meh” emoticon. But it was Councilmember Sherman who proved to be most insensitive with his nonsensical questioning of David Estrella of the county’s Health and Human Services Agency about homeless people who “who would rather be out in the streets.”

“Where’s my free Subway card and my toiletries?” is how Sherman characterized these people, a right-wing fallacy that has been perpetuated since the Reagan era and one that has been consistently disproven.

Stacy “I manage big things” Spector: The mayor’s not-a-homeless-czar advisor was rightly grilled by Councilmember David Alvarez after a fluffy and PR-driven presentation that came complete with buzzy phrases like “compassion drives action” and “that won’t change unless it changes,” not to mention an “Ecosystem” Regional Infrastructure chart that looked like something out of an IKEA catalogue. When she pointed out to Alvarez that no solutions were off the table, including a giant tent structure on vacant land, Alvarez quickly and rightly reminded her that giant tents were not a viable solution and that the council had already decided that issue years before.

San Diego’s homeless population: Council president Cole reiterated throughout the day that there were people on site to help anyone in attendance that was homeless. However, many of those people were turned away at the door because there were no accommodations made for them to store their belongings. What’s more, many of the people who could have used that help were likely too busy clearing out their belongings in hopes of not getting caught up in one of the city’s weekly encampment sweeps (yes, there was one on Monday just before the meeting).

And in the end, despite Roberts’ “please don’t get discouraged” reiteration and Cole’s plea that the city needed “to act with urgency,” the latter adjourned the meeting with the promise to look at the report from the mayor’s office and the proposals from the Housing Commission, as well as to look into the creation of a homeless committee at an April 5 meeting of the Council’s rules committee.

Here’s hoping that the Council will do more than talk at that meeting.